School Lunches

7 Pages

1708 Words

“I’m looking for Zim, the green kid?” “Oh, the green child. He’s right over there, doulbed over in pain.” “Ohhhhh!” “He’s missing his liver. That’s how some kids react to the cafeteria food, the lucky ones.” The reputation of school lunches has long been, shall we say, less than stellar. For years, the media in this country has portrayed the school lunch as a veritable blight upon the land; books, television, and movies have created an image that gives school lunches a bad name. Recently, the school lunch has come under fire from the news media and public health groups because of flaws in the program, and health risks caused by it. Today’s school lunch program has become the bane of a child’s existence that it has long been portrayed in the media. We will begin with a look at why the school lunch program was created and it’s goals, then look at the flaws in the system itself, and then the health problems that are related to it.
The school lunch program was itself an outgrowth of the turmoil that was World War Two. The program was created by congress as a "measure of national security, to safeguard the health and well-being of the Nation's children." The driving force behind all of this political language was draft problems. According to the Food Research and Action Center, the school lunch program had its roots in the draft. Many of the men that were drafted were rejected from service because of conditions that were the result of serious nutritional deficiencies. This being the case, the school lunch program wasn’t created out of the selfless good will of the US government, but to create a larger pool of draft eligible men, for the next time we saw fit make war upon some other nation. Even with this inauspicious beginning, the school lunch program sought to make sure that the youth of America were getting their needed nutrition. Current Health, September 2002 states that a hot lunch can contain no mor...